Monday, 24 June 2013

An Israeli geneticist challenges the “Zionist” hypothesis that all Jews belong to one race and are intimately related, thus giving them a common ancestor in the Holy Land and a Biblical claim to Palestine.

Scientists usually don’t call each other “liars” and “frauds.”

But that’s how Johns Hopkins University post-doctoral researcher Eran Elhaik describes a group of widely respected geneticists, including Harry Ostrer, professor of pathology and geneticsat Yeshiva University’sAlbert Einstein College of Medicineand author of the 2012 book “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People.”

For years now, the findings of Ostrer and several other scientists have stood virtually unchallenged on the genetics of Jews and the story they tell of the common Middle East origins shared by many Jewish populations worldwide. Jews — and Ashkenazim in particular — are indeed one people, Ostrer’s research finds.

It’s a theory that more or less affirms the understanding that many Jews themselves hold of who they are in the world: a people who, though scattered, share an ethnic-racial bond rooted in their common ancestral descent from the indigenous Jews of ancient Judea or Palestine, as the Romans called it after they conquered the Jewish homeland.

But now, Elhaik, an Israeli molecular geneticist, has published research that he says debunks this claim. And that has set off a predictable clash.

“He’s just wrong,” said Marcus Feldman of Stanford University, a leading researcher in Jewish genetics, referring to Elhaik.

The sometimes strong emotions generated by this scientific dispute stem from a politically loaded question that scientists and others have pondered for decades: Where in the world did Ashkenazi Jews come from?

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The debate touches upon such sensitive issues as whether the Jewish people is a race or a religion, and whether Jews or Palestinians are descended from the original inhabitants of what is now the State of Israel.

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Ostrer’s theory is sometimes marshaled to lend the authority of science to the Zionist narrative, which views the migration of modern-day Jews to what is now Israel, and their rule over that land, as a simple act of repossession by the descendants of the land’s original residents. Ostrer declined to be interviewed for this story. But in his writings, Ostrer points out the dangers of such reductionism; some of the same genetic markers common among Jews, he finds, can be found in Palestinians, as well.

By using sophisticated molecular tools, Feldman, Ostrer and most other scientists in the field have found that Jews are genetically homogeneous. No matter where they live, these scientists say, Jews are genetically more similar to each other than to their non-Jewish neighbors, and they have a shared Middle Eastern ancestry.

The geneticists’ research backs up what is known as the Rhineland Hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, Ashkenazi Jews descended from Jews who fled Palestine after the Muslim conquest in the seventh century and settled in Southern Europe. In the late Middle Ages they moved into eastern Europe from Germany, or the Rhineland.

“Nonsense,” said Elhaik, a 33-year-old Israeli Jew from Beersheba who earned a doctorate in molecular evolution from the University of Houston. The son of an Italian man and Iranian woman who met in Israel, Elhaik, a dark-haired, compact man, sat down recently for an interview in his bare, narrow cubicle of an office at Hopkins, where he’s worked for four years.

In “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses,” published in December in the online journal Genome Biology and Evolution, Elhaik says he has proved that Ashkenazi Jews’ roots lie in the Caucasus — a region at the border of Europe and Asia that lies between the Black and Caspian seas — not in the Middle East. They are descendants, he argues, of the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived in one of the largest medieval states in Eurasia and then migrated to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Ashkenazi genes, Elhaik added, are far more heterogeneous than Ostrer and other proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis believe. Elhaik did find a Middle Eastern genetic marker in DNA from Jews, but, he says, it could be from Iran, not ancient Judea.

Elhaik writes that the Khazars converted to Judaism in the eighth century, although many historians believe that only royalty and some members of the aristocracy converted. But widespread conversion by the Khazars is the only way to explain the ballooning of the European Jewish population to 8 million at the beginning of the 20th century from its tiny base in the Middle Ages, Elhaik says.

Elhaik bases his conclusion on an analysis of genetic data published by a team of researchers led by Doron Behar, a population geneticist and senior physician at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center, in Haifa. Using the same data, Behar’s team published in 2010 a paper concluding that most contemporary Jews around the world and some non-Jewish populations from the Levant, or Eastern Mediterranean, are closely related.

Elhaik used some of the same statistical tests as Behar and others, but he chose different comparisons. Elhaik compared “genetic signatures” found in Jewish populations with those of modern-day Armenians and Georgians, which he uses as a stand-in for the long-extinct Khazarians because they live in the same area as the medieval state.

“It’s an unrealistic premise,” said University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer, one of Behar’s co-authors, of Elhaik’s paper. Hammer notes that Armenians have Middle Eastern roots, which, he says, is why they appeared to be genetically related to Ashkenazi Jews in Elhaik’s study.

Hammer, who also co-wrote the first paper that showed modern-day Kohanim are descended from a single male ancestor, calls Elhaik and other Khazarian Hypothesis proponents “outlier folks… who have a minority view that’s not supported scientifically. I think the arguments they make are pretty weak and stretching what we know.”

Feldman, director of Stanford’s Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, echoes Hammer. “If you take all of the careful genetic population analysis that has been done over the last 15 years… there’s no doubt about the common Middle Eastern origin,” he said. He added that Elhaik’s paper “is sort of a one-off.”

Elhaik’s statistical analysis would not pass muster with most contemporary scholars, Feldman said: “He appears to be applying the statistics in a way that gives him different results from what everybody else has obtained from essentially similar data.”

Elhaik, who doesn’t believe that Moses, Aaron or the 12 Tribes of Israel ever existed, shrugs off such criticism.

“That’s a circular argument,” he said of the notion that Jews’ and Armenians’ genetic similarities stem from common ancestors in the Middle East and not from Khazaria, the area where the Armenians live. If you believe that, he says, then other non-Jewish populations, such as Georgian, that are genetically similar to Armenians should be considered genetically related to Jews, too, “and so on and so forth.”

Dan Graur, Elhaik’s doctoral supervisor at U.H. and a member of the editorial board of the journal that published his paper, calls his former student “very ambitious, very independent. That’s what I like.” Graur, a Romanian-born Jew who served on the faculty of Tel Aviv University for 22 years before moving 10 years ago to the Houston school, said Elhaik “writes more provocatively than may be needed, but it’s his style.” Graur calls Elhaik’s conclusion that Ashkenazi Jews originated to the east of Germany “a very honest estimate.”

In a news article that accompanied Elhaik’s journal paper, Shlomo Sand, history professor at Tel Aviv University and author of the controversial 2009 book “The Invention of the Jewish People,” said the study vindicated his long-held ideas.

”It’s so obvious for me,” Sand told the journal. “Some people, historians and even scientists, turn a blind eye to the truth. Once, to say Jews were a race was anti-Semitic, now to say they’re not a race is anti-Semitic. It’s crazy how history plays with us.”

The paper has received little coverage in mainstream American media, but it has attracted the attention of anti-Zionists and “anti-Semitic white supremacists,” Elhaik said.

Interestingly, while anti-Zionist bloggers have applauded Elhaik’s work, saying it proves that contemporary Jews have no legitimate claim to Israel, some white supremacists have attacked it.

David Duke, for example, is disturbed by the assertion that Jews are not a race. “The disruptive and conflict-ridden behavior which has marked out Jewish Supremacist activities through the millennia strongly suggests that Jews have remained more or less genetically uniform and have… developed a group evolutionary survival strategy based on a common biological unity — something which strongly militates against the Khazar theory,” wrote the former Ku Klux Klansman and former Louisiana state assemblyman on his blog in February.

“I’m not communicating with them,” Elhaik said of the white supremacists.

He says it also bothers him, a veteran of seven years in the Israeli army, that anti-Zionists have capitalized on his research “and they’re not going to be proven wrong anytime soon.”

But proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis also have a political agenda, he said, claiming they “were motivated to justify the Zionist narrative.”

To illustrate his point, Elhaik swivels his chair around to face his computer and calls up a 2010 email exchange with Ostrer.

“It was a great pleasure reading your group’s recent paper, ‘Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era,’ that illuminate[s] the history of our people,” Elhaik wrote to Ostrer. “Is it possible to see the data used for the study?”

Ostrer replied that the data are not publicly available. “It is possible to collaborate with the team by writing a brief proposal that outlines what you plan to do,” he wrote. “Criteria for reviewing include novelty and strength of the proposal, non-overlap with current or planned activities, and non-defamatory nature toward the Jewish people.”

That last requirement, Elhaik argues, reveals the bias of Ostrer and his collaborators.

Allowing scientists access to data only if their research will not defame Jews is “peculiar,” said Catherine DeAngelis, who edited the Journal of the American Medical Association for a decade. “What he does is set himself up for criticism: Wait a minute. What’s this guy trying to hide?”

Despite what his critics claim, Elhaik says, he was not out to prove that contemporary Jews have no connection to the Jewish people of the Bible. His primary research focus is the genetics of mental illness, which, he explains, led him to question the assumption that Ashkenazi Jews are a useful population to study because they’re so homogeneous.

Elhaik says he first read about the Khazarian Hypothesis a decade ago in a 1976 book by the late Hungarian-British author Arthur Koestler, “The Thirteenth Tribe,” written before scientists had the tools to compare genomes.

Koestler, who was Jewish by birth, said his aim in writing the book was to eliminate the racist underpinnings of anti-Semitism in Europe. “Should this theory be confirmed, the term ‘anti-Semitism’ would become void of meaning,” the book jacket reads. Although Koestler’s book was generally well reviewed, some skeptics questioned the author’s grasp of the history of Khazaria.

Graur is not surprised that Elhaik has stood up against the “clique” of scientists who believe that Jews are genetically homogeneous. “He enjoys being combative,” Graur said. “That’s what science is.”

International
container shipping is one of the most dynamic economic sectors of China over
the last few years. Between
1990’s and 2012 the container trade at China’s ports expanded more than 10%
p.a. on average (2011: +11%). The container shipping sector greatly surpassed
seaborne trade overall and even the growth in international sea transport in
China.

The
major reasons for the growth in container shipping in Chinaare
on the demand side, the increasing international division of labour in the
course of liberalization and the resulting trade movements; and also the rise
in importance of goods eminently suited to transport by container. On the
supply side, the considerable expansion of the container ship fleets and faster
loading and unloading of container ships are playing an important part; they
allow short turnaround times in port.

The
growth in international container shipping will continue for the next 10 years
in China, with an only slightly reduced impetus. The container shipping industry expects annual growth of
about 9% in container demand up to 2020. The main routes that are likely to
achieve the greatest expansion include intra-Asian transport as well as the
routes from China to North America and intra- Asia. In contrast, transport
between North America and Europe will reduce. Of the 25 largest container ports
in the world, 16 are in Asia, and 4 of China’s major ports are listed among the
Top 10 busiest in the world.

Despite
the recovery in global demand for container transport, freight charges will
gradually increase but forecasted to be below the level experienced before the
Global Financial Crisis. The main
reason is the anticipated massive expansion of global container ship capacity.
Between 2008 and 2011 the available container capacity worldwide will expand by
about 50%. The shipyards’ long order books for container ships argue against a
rapid redress of the excess supply.

The rise of China is at its heart an
economic phenomenon. Its story is the most astonishing example of economic
growth in human history. China’s remarkable journey to become an economic
superpower can only be explained by its fairly unique economic driver, trade.
And the most important variable for China in this complex world of
international trade was shipping containers.

The irony is that this “workhorse”
played a pivotal role in China’s economic transformation from one of the
poorest developing economies under communist rule to become the world’s
second-largest economy in just 30-years, but has hardly been mentioned. We tend
to forget that the humble shipping container was a powerful antidote to
economic pessimism surrounding China in its initial intention to become a
trading nation. This simple metal box has single-handedly transformed China
into global trading powerhouse. In fact, new research suggests that the
container has been more of a driver of globalization for China than all trade
agreements in the past 50-years taken together.

In terms of trade, the total value
of China’s exports and imports in 2011 was $3 trillion; with about 13 percent
of that trade occurred between China and the US. China has already surpassed
Germany as the world’s No. 2 trading nation[1]. Total foreign trade in 2010 was
$2.17 trillion, up from $1.4 trillion in 2005, $289 billion in 1995 and $21
billion in 1978[2]. Trade has been growing at a rate of around 30 percent a
year since 2001 (2011). The World Bank calculated that China contributed 31
percent to global trade growth in 2011[3].

Strategic
Role of Containers

Containerization is a testament to
the power of process innovation. In the 1950s the world’s ports still did
business much as they had for centuries. Then containerization changed
everything. It was the brainchild of Malcom McLean, an American trucking
magnate.

Currently, the volume of total world
seaborne trade – measured in tonne miles (the product of distance and the
quantity transported) rose by an average of 3.6% between 1990 and 2012[4]. Maritime
transport therefore forms the basis of the high, and largely constant, growth
in world trade (see Chart 1). This compounded with the dynamics of
international container shipping, the recovery in total seaborne trade since
financial crisis appear to be impressive.

Chart 1 also shows the surge in
container demand from China has been far greater than total trade in both the
US and the whole of Europe put together. Though the container’s transformative
power seems obvious for China it is certainly “impossible to quantify”. Since
the 1990’s the growth rate of container demand has averaged 10.6% per annum[5].
Early evidence suggests that one plausible reason for the surge in container
demand from China was due to an increasing proportion in the container handling
business from transshipment traffic across all major ports in China[6].

China’s ‘live-wire’ remains the Port
of Shanghai. It contains three major container areas: Wusongkou, Waigaoqia and
Yangshan. In 2011 alone, all three container areas itself handled 368 million
tons of cargo, including 28 million TEUs of containerized cargo, despite the
worldwide financial crisis[7]. Containers are the heart of the Port of
Shanghai's business[8]. Over the five-year period ending in 2012, container
traffic through the Port of Shanghai increased from 6.43 million TEUs to 21.7
million TEUs[9] (refer Appendix 1 for detail of individual port performance in
China).

Each year goods moving through the
Port of Shanghai represents one-fourth of the total value of China's foreign
trade. Even more staggering facts to know that each month an average of over
2,000 container ships call at the port. Chart 2 below depicts an increasing
proportion of transshipment traffic, i.e. container handling in China.

It’s clear that the proportion of
transshipment traffic rose in China from 11% of total container handling in
1980 to over 37% last year[10]. This literally means that an increasing number
of shipping and charter companies in China and have succeeded in keeping the number
of working containers at a relatively high level by efficient use of ships and
by grouping transport at the large container ports throughout China.

Chart 2 depicts an increasing
proportion of transshipment traffic in China. In absolute terms (measured in
TEU), transshipment activities are considerably larger than container trade in
China[11] (2012: 400 million TEU compared with 114 million TEU in the 1990’s).
A combination of direct deep-sea import/export, transhipment and
short-sea container traffic in China has ensured attractive future prospects
for container demand as ports are able to penetrate global markets.

Meanwhile Chart 3 below clearly indicates
that trade between China-Rest of remains the most important for global
container trade, with a share of over 38%[12] in 2011 (refer Chart 3 below).
The runners-up are trade on the Trans-Pacific route (just under 16%) as well as
the routes between Europe and the Far East (over 12%). In comparison,
intra-European trade (just over 7%) and the trans- Atlantic route (about 6%)
are hardly more than niche markets.

Another positive growth factor for the container market in China is the rising proportion of goods shipped that are highly suitable for transport in containers (finished and part-finished products, as well as general cargo). In contrast, traditional bulk goods (e.g. steel, ore, coal and grain) are falling in relative importance. The transportation of temperature-sensitive goods is no longer a problem, as reefer containers have been developed. This freight structure effect, which will continue in the future, has given a lasting boost to the demand for container transport.

In addition, it is now possible to transport products in containers that, at first sight, do not appear suitable for this form of transport (e.g. certain agricultural products, chemicals and building materials)[13]. This is particularly valid for transport between countries with trade imbalances.

As a result of the trade surplus, China has with the rest of the world; the demand for container capacity on the routes from China is higher than in the opposite direction. In many cases it is more economical to load containers with “unusual” goods on the return journey from other countries to China than to transport them empty.

Economic Impact of Containers

What explains the outsize effect of containers in general? Reduced costs alone cannot. Though containers brought some early savings, shipping rates did not drop very much after their introduction. In a 2007 paper David Hummels, an economist at Purdue University, found that ocean-shipping charges varied little from 1952 to 1970—and then rose with the cost of oil.

More important than costs are knock-on effects on efficiency. In 1965 dock labour could move only 1.7 tonnes per hour onto a cargo ship; five years later a container crew could load 30 tonnes per hour[14] . This allowed freight lines to use bigger ships and still slash the time spent in port. The journey time from door to door fell by half and became more consistent. The container also upended a rigid labour force. Falling labour demand reduced dockworkers’ bargaining power and cut the number of strikes. And because containers could be packed and sealed at the factory, losses to theft (and insurance rates) plummeted.

Sustainable Container Demand

In the case of China, the increase in demand for containers can viewed either on the demand or supply side. On the demand side there are a number of specific advantages of this form of transport. Shorter loading and unloading times, compared with traditional cargo ships, and better opportunities for onward transport are particularly decisive factors behind the great success of container shipping[15].

These save costs and, by virtue of shorter turnaround times, reduce capacity bottlenecks in the ports. For this reason the degree of containerization (as a proportion of the total volume of cargo handled) has increased considerably in all the ports in China (refer Appendix 2).

Of significant importance to the strong growth in container demand from China were both in the past and future economic development plans. Beijing realized that over time containers had reshaped global trade and was quick to adopt containerization. Soon ports in China became bigger and their number smaller. Among the immediate multiplier effects to the Chinese economy was that more types of goods could be traded economically. Speed and reliability of shipping enabled just-in-time production, which in turn allowed Multinational Companies (MNC’s) to relocate to China as it enabled firms to grow leaner and more responsive to markets as even distant suppliers could now provide wares quickly and on schedule[16] .

From there, international supply-chains also grew more intricate and inclusive in China. This helped accelerate industrialization in emerging economies such as China[17]. Trade links was established trough containerization enabled developing economies simply to join existing supply chains rather than build an entire industry from the ground up. But for those connections, the Chinese miracle might have been much less miraculous.

From an economic point of view the container shipping sector is benefiting from the further advances in international division of labour and decentralization of production processes occurring in China[18]. The traditional industrial countries in Europe and the USA no longer choose only low-wage countries that are closer by (Eastern Europe or Mexico) but increasingly in Asia.

The high foreign direct investments into China alone (over USD 60 billion in 2012), is concentrated on the industrial sector, illustrates the importance that outsourcing and off-shoring now have on its economic growth[19]. Within only a few years China has become the world market leader in many industrial products (e.g. refrigerator, air-conditioning equipment and other consumer electronic goods) that eventually are shipped in containers.

Outsourcing and global freight transport have naturally benefited from the liberalization of conducting trade in China over the last few years. The surge in container demand was due to lower customs duties and the dismantling of non-tariff trade barriers act as a catalyst for international trade[20]. China’s entry into the WTO at the end of 2001 was an important milestone in this respect. It gave an immense boost to trade in and with the whole region. It is not without good reason that China are now dominating the global shipping industry.

Drewry is forecasting an average growth of over 15% p.a. in container handling up to 2020 in China (refer Chart 5 above). This means that container growth rates in the next few years is expected to boom since the financial crisis. Even up to 2020, we should expect an average growth of 15% per annum in container demand from China[21] . For these reasons, inter alia, the high levels of container demand in the last few years will therefore increase and be sustainable. This is largely due to the exceptionally high growth in productivity levels achieved by Chinese ports

The pre-requisites for future demand for containers from China are already in place. On the demand side, the reasons already stated also argue for high future growth rates can be expected that the emerging Asian countries like China, India and Indonesia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. With even stronger links to the global value-chain, the demand for imported manufactured goods from Chinese consumers with higher income have increased, leading to containers being a much sought after commodity.

Rational for China’s Future Demand

As the global economic growth began to lose traction in 2008, China was among the first nations to be pro-active and made a bold decision in looking for ways to use its huge reserves to boost its domestic economy.

For starters, over the last few years, Beijing has increased its development expenditure in improving the productivity of all major shipping ports dotted along the South-East coastline in order to create an integrated supply-chain management system with its remote North-West Provinces.

Why are container ports the real driver of the Chinese economy? Every year goods moving through the various ports in China represents one-fourth of the value of China's foreign trade[22]. One staggering fact is that each month on average over two thousand container ships leave the China, carrying their cargo to the world's major continents and markets[23] .

With a massive capital injection of more USD 100 billion from the Chinese government to upgrade all major container ports to attract Post-Panamax vessels it is forecasted that China’s trade to accelerate further[24] (refer Appendix 2). A port is considered post-Panamax ready when it has met three key criteria’s:

With larger vessels expected to come calling at various ports in China, maritime analysts have already predicted that it's going to be the shipping industry's busiest season of the year. However, the eventual problem is the challenge for these liners to find enough steel boxes to ship their televisions, toys and other gifts. The other burgeoning concern is that after being stuck in the global economic doldrums, Chinese shipping businesses are slowly beginning to recover as manufacturing activities resume but the shortage of containers may certainly disrupt their delivery process.

Conclusion

The past fifty-five years have seen intermodalism transformed from a theory into a high tech global phenomenon. “Intermodalism” describes the system of standardized cargo containers which move seamlessly between different modes of transport around the world. Containers have been pivotal in the emergence of this system and over time reshaped global trade.

The impact from containerization have been evident the world over. Ports have became bigger and their number smaller. More types of goods could be traded economically. Speed and reliability of shipping enabled just-in-time production, which in turn allowed firms to grow leaner and more responsive to markets as even distant suppliers could now provide wares quickly and on schedule. International supply chains also grew more intricate and inclusive.

To conclude, shipping containers have helped accelerate industrialization in emerging economies such as China. Trade links enabled developing economies like China to join existing supply chains rather than build an entire industry from the ground up. But for those connections, the Chinese miracle might have been much less miraculous.

[4], There are no data available on international shipping at a supranational level. We have therefore relied on statistics from well-known market research institutes in this sector. These are mainly: the Institut für Seeverkehrswirtschaft und Logistik (ISL), Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd. (Drewry) and Ocean Shipping Consultants Ltd. (OSC).

[5], World Cargo News

[6], There is a further parallel with aviation in that, on routes between the hubs large container ships, now with a capacity of over 9,000 TEU (increasing trend) are used, while considerably smaller ships (currently up to 2,500 TEU) are chosen for feeder services.